The Murder Book Read online

  ‘You need to learn to duck, lad,’ Mickey told him, standing back and waiting for his boss to return his attention to the matter in hand. The landlord did not have Mickey’s patience.

  ‘I thought we agreed to meet at eleven fifteen,’ he said. ‘My time is of value, Inspector.’

  Inspector Johnstone turned slowly and looked at the man. Nothing was said but it was Joseph Penning who flushed red, shuffled uncomfortably and apologized.

  Mickey Hitchens hid a grin.

  ‘Shall we go inside?’ Henry Johnstone asked.

  ‘In there?’ Joseph Penning looked very uneasy.

  ‘It is still your house, is it not? Until the end of the month, I believe. That’s if the grocer still intends to expand his premises?’

  Constable Parkin opened the door and Inspector Johnstone led the way, going straight upstairs and giving the landlord no option but to follow. Mickey hung back on the landing and watched the other two men as they paused in the doorway.

  Henry Johnstone pointed. ‘Your tenant, Mary Fields, was strangled on the bed. Her daughter was thrown against the wall – you can see the blood – and her head was then smashed open. The young man who came to their aid – well, you can see his life ended on the floor beside the bed. We understand that Mary Fields had … visitors. Men. I’m assuming you know about that.’

  ‘I didn’t know about anything. I’m told there were rumours but the woman was not known to me I was just trying to be a Good Samaritan by giving her and her little girl somewhere to live.’

  ‘A place with rotten floors and damp walls that was to be demolished in few days’ time?’

  ‘By which time her husband would be home and they could agree to do something else, go somewhere else. It was better than being on the streets, I’m sure you’ll agree to that. Or throwing themselves on parish care and risking the child being taken away from her.’

  Henry Johnstone nodded but whether he agreed or not was a moot point. ‘So what did you know about her?’

  ‘I knew very little. One of my other tenants came to me and said there was a woman looking for a place to live. She had a little girl and she’d had to leave her previous place in a hurry but she had a deposit for this one. My tenant knew that this would be empty for a few weeks, the woman was desperate and, if I’m honest, probably knew I wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to make a few quid out of it. There, I’m being upfront with you, sir. So I agreed for Sump to meet Mrs Fields here and if he decided she was deserving we should go ahead provided she had the deposit and …’

  ‘References?’

  Joseph Penning did not reply.

  ‘And did this tenant of yours explain how she came to be in such dire need? And as we know that she left her previous lodgings with rent unpaid, how do you think she raised a deposit?’

  ‘All I know is that she had the money. I left it at that. If I’d known she was going to be so much trouble I would never have agreed to it.’

  ‘Trouble? Because she got herself killed?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that. I meant her reputation.’

  ‘Which you claim to have known nothing about,’ Henry pointed out.

  Joseph Penning shifted uncomfortably. ‘You can’t help but hear things,’ he said.

  ‘And did you visit Mary Fields at night? Did Sump?’

  Joseph Penning drew himself up to his full height, still only reaching the level of Henry Johnstone’s chest, his face flushed with outrage. ‘I am a respectable businessman with a wife and family.’

  ‘As, I’m sure, were most of those who came to see Mrs Fields. By all accounts she tried to be careful. She relied on the business of so-called respectable men.’

  ‘I take it you’re finished with me, Inspector.’ Joseph Penning replaced his hat and turned away from the door.

  ‘Would you like to take a guess, perhaps, as to whom Mary Fields’ clients might have been?’

  ‘Clients? A businessman might be said to have clients. A solicitor might be said to have clients. A prostitute …’

  ‘Whatever label you’d like to apply,’ Henry Johnstone said. ‘I’m interested only in names.’

  ‘And you’ll find no one willing to guess at them,’ Joseph Penning said.

  Mickey Hitchens watched as the man stamped his way down the stairs and out of the house. ‘He’s right, you know,’ Mickey told his boss. ‘No one is going to implicate their friends or their neighbours just to find the killer of a prostitute and her kiddie and cousin.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to follow the leads of what they don’t say, what they don’t tell us,’ Henry replied.

  Henry and Mickey left shortly afterwards to go and speak to the previous landlord, Mr Paul Tring, who had been responsible for evicting Mary and Ruby from their former rooms. He had agreed to meet them in the shop he owned, over which the little family had lodged. Henry had spoken briefly to him the previous day. Tring sold hardware, hammers, nails, tin baths and candles from a corner shop a few streets away from where Mary and Ruby had died. His own family, he told them, now lived in small terraced house in the same street as the shop but the rooms above had once been theirs.

  ‘She seemed like a nice enough woman,’ he said. ‘And her man worked hard, was away a lot. Then I started to see them sneaking round the back at night. Men, you know, after just one thing.’ He tidied his already tidy counter, clearly embarrassed. ‘I didn’t wish her and the lass any harm – certainly not this – but I didn’t want it over my shop. Selling herself, and the child in the house too. And I didn’t want my wife and my kids seeing and thinking that I might have … well, you know.’

  ‘And did you?’ Mickey asked.

  ‘No, I most certainly did not!’

  ‘And did you recognize any of these visitors? Did your neighbours put a name to any of them?’

  Tring shook his head but he wouldn’t meet Mickey’s eyes. He looked at Inspector Johnstone. ‘Well-dressed, not from round here. Not working men.’

  It was clear they were going to learn very little more from Tring. ‘Maybe we should speak to your wife or your near neighbours,’ Henry Johnstone said. ‘In streets like this there is always someone to see and the women keep their eyes open. In my experience women don’t miss much. So if you think of anything please let us know.’

  The shop bell chimed and an elderly woman, still in her apron and slippers, came in. Mickey and Henry left and the woman looked curiously after them.

  ‘You reckon he knows anything?’ Mickey said.

  ‘I think he can guess at a lot, and I think he might tell us if he thinks we really will go and talk to his wife.’

  ‘Are we going to do that?’

  ‘Maybe later, when he’s had a chance to think about it. Perhaps we’ll just show up tonight, when all the family’s there and see what his wife has to say.’

  Mickey Hitchens laughed.

  FIFTEEN

  Dar Samuels had always told stories. It was in the blood, he’d say. His father had told stories and his grandmother before that. It was the way you kept the past alive.

  The family had gathered around the fire after supper. It might be June but it was still cold in the evenings, the weather still not having caught up with the calendar, and as the fire was used for cooking it was kept in most of the time with the big pot full of stew hanging above it.

  Three chairs had been fetched from beside the table and the younger kids, Ned and Alice, sat on the rag rug in front of the hearth.

  ‘There was once a vicar,’ Dar Samuels said. ‘His name was Emsworth. The Reverend Emsworth, and he was called out one night to one of his parishioners that was sick and about to die. It was a bleak, dark night but the Reverend Emsworth was a good man, not like some, and even on a night with the wind blowing fit to burst and the rain coming in slantwise, when the boy arrived with a message saying that old mother Clark was about to pop her clogs he wasn’t the sort to just think he would wait till morning. So he gathered his things together and told the housekeeper to make su
re the boy what had brought the message was fed and he’d set off alone towards Binbrook to give the old lady what comfort he could.

  ‘Now to go by road would have taken him an hour longer, maybe more, and he’d been told the woman wouldn’t last, so he set off across the fields carrying his bag and with his coat pulled tight around him and a shawl around his head. All the time he was walking he had the sense of someone watching him but every time he looked around the rain was so thick and the wind was so strong, blowing it into his eyes, that he couldn’t see a thing. And as he walked he said a little prayer, like the man of God should do, asking the good Lord to protect him.’

  Ethan laughed then; his dad was certainly not a religious man, neither was he a great believer in the righteousness of vicars.

  ‘So after a little while, this Reverend Emsworth began to feel a presence beside him, walking along pace for pace, and it seemed to him that the rain had slackened off and the wind grew less and the feeling of him being watched? Well, it was still there but it didn’t seem to matter any more. So he reached old mother Clark, gave the final blessings and then she died.

  ‘Now, it must have been two, three years later when he was summoned to Lincoln, into the castle to shrive a man what was to be ’anged next day and when they showed him into the cell the young man said, “I know you.”

  ‘Well, this Reverend Emsworth, he reckoned he had a good memory for faces but he knew he’d never seen this young man in his life before and told him so. And the young man said, “No, you never did see me but I saw you. One night I saw you walking in the rain, struggling up the hills with a bag in your hand and a shawl around your head all bundled up against the rain. I planned to rob you. So I followed you but then I saw this other bloke come out of nowhere, walking up the hill by the side of you. Big bugger, he was, built like a brick outhouse, so I followed for a bit, see if he might go away but he never did.”

  ‘And this Reverend Emsworth, he remembered that night and how he’d certainly felt another presence walking beside him after he prayed to God. And he figured it must have been one of them there angels come down to help and he told the young man so.

  ‘Next day he saw the man hanged for the thief and murderer that he was. Directly he must have gone home and he must have thanked his lucky stars that he wasn’t another victim, robbed and left dead in the mud.’

  There was a knock at the cottage door and Ted Hanson let himself in, calling out a greeting.

  ‘Come along in, boy,’ Dar Samuels said, standing up but otherwise dropping all ceremony. This was his place and he considered Ted to be a good lad.

  Ted closed the door and nodded to Ethan’s mum, who was hustling the children upstairs to bed.

  ‘I won’t be stopping,’ he said, ‘I’ve just got in from Louth and the horse in foal will be arriving tomorrow. Dad will want you to check them over so I thought I’d let you know. Come to drop the papers in too.’ He placed a bundle of newspapers, the Lincolnshire Echo and the Louth Standard, on the kitchen table. Ted had always made a practice of buying extra and bringing them along to Dar. He knew Dar liked to keep up with the news and so he always saved the papers that came to the big house as well as supplementing them whenever he went into town.

  Dar thanked him. ‘So what’s happening out there in the big world?’ he asked.

  ‘Drama like you wouldn’t believe, Dar. Triple murder in Louth. A woman and a bairn and the young man they reckon is a cousin. Brutal, it is.’

  He indicated one of the papers and Dar Samuels got up to take a look.

  ‘Three slain in Louth horror,’ he read. ‘Horror unearthed in backyard. Strangled and beaten. Police name the victim as Mary Fields, her seven-year-old daughter Ruby and her husband’s cousin, Walter …’ He read on in silence and Ethan watched as his mother went over to join her husband, looking over his shoulder.

  A chill weight seemed to have dropped into Ethan’s belly and he felt the colour drain from his face.

  He was suddenly aware that his little sister had appeared at the top of the stairs. Grateful of the distraction, he turned to her. ‘Come on, sweetheart, you’re meant to be in bed.’ He climbed the stairs towards her and realized she was crying. ‘What is it, lovely? What’s the matter then?’

  Alice pointed towards their parents. ‘I heard,’ she whispered, ‘someone killed a little girl like me.’

  Ethan hugged his little sister. ‘It happened a long way away,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that will happen here, I promise you. Ma and Dar and me will look after you. You and Ned.’

  She cuddled into him for a moment and then allowed him to lead her back up to bed. Ethan tucked her in and kissed her forehead. Then he went back downstairs.

  ‘Alice heard what you read out. She was upset.’

  ‘Upsetting news,’ Dar said. ‘What bastard would kill a child?’

  ‘I’d best be off,’ Ted Hanson said.’ See you in the morning, Dar.’

  When he had gone Ethan picked up the newspaper and read the article, recalling the last time he had seen Mary Fields.

  They had argued.

  She had wanted more money than he’d been prepared to give.

  Ethan recalled the anger he had felt. And now she was dead.

  ‘It’s a bad business,’ his father said.

  Ethan nodded. ‘I … I knew her slightly,’ he confessed. ‘Her husband and I, we were shipboard together for a while.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Dar nodded. ‘Makes it worse when it’s someone you know.’

  And murder detectives had been called up from London, Ethan thought. Self-consciously he fingered the buttons on his shirt, a suspicion growing in his mind that he might have lost the button there, in Mary’s room.

  SIXTEEN

  Mickey had been dispatched to Grimsby early that morning to interview those who had served with George Fields on his last trip. He returned late afternoon and they retired to The Wheatsheaf to compare notes.

  ‘George Fields is a well-thought-of man,’ Mickey Hitchens said. ‘He’s reckoned to be a good worker and gets on with everyone shipboard. Not a troublemaker. He’s got into the odd fight but nothing that anyone takes as serious.’

  ‘And what were these fights about?’

  Mickey consulted his notes but Henry Johnstone knew this was just for the look of it. Mickey already had the information in his head. ‘One time he was trying to break up an argument, witnesses say everyone was three sheets to the wind, George Fields included. Someone hit George by accident and George lashed out – hit back. End result, six of them were fined. End of story. Second time it seems someone insulted his wife. Said she was no better than she ought to be. You know, I’ve never understood that expression.’

  Henry Johnstone nodded thoughtfully. ‘And George Fields did what?’

  ‘Broke his nose for him. Apparently everyone shut up after that.’

  ‘But nobody stopped thinking it, I presume.’

  ‘Joe Peck, master of the Miriam Sanders, after a bit of pushing admitted that they all knew about Mary Fields and thought her husband a damn fool for putting up with it. Most of his shipmates said they’d ha’ beaten seven shades out of her and then left had it been their wife, and no doubt beat more than seven shades out of the men that went with her, but everyone agreed that George wasn’t the type.’

  ‘And was he seen as less of a man for that?’

  ‘By some, certainly. But they all agree that there was no better man to have with you in a force nine and no better man to have your back in a fight. It seems they reckoned his only weakness was that wife of his.’

  ‘And his daughter?’

  ‘Everyone reckons he doted on her. The master thinks it was little Ruby that kept the two of them together and even those who had no time for Mary Fields admitted she was a good mother, apart from her, shall we say, professional activities.’

  ‘So what was to stop him taking Ruby and leaving her?’ Henry Johnstone wondered.

  ‘Love is a mysterious thing,’
Mickey Hitchens pronounced. ‘Besides, how many lone fathers do you know of? He’d not have been seen as a fit parent on his own. And how would he have earned a living with a kiddie in tow? I think I’ll get another beer. You want one?’

  Henry Johnstone shook his head; he was still only halfway down his own pint. ‘No female relatives who could have taken the child in?’

  ‘Not that anyone knew about. George certainly had none and Mary’s are not local.’

  ‘Mary Fields is reported to have a brother that she stayed with sometimes but no one seems to know where.’

  ‘A fiction, maybe? A cover story?’ Mickey took himself off to the bar and Henry was left to his thoughts. They had adjourned to the corner of the snug that they had occupied before, and as had happened before, everyone else had vacated the space and left them to it. Henry thought about what Mickey had told him. He found he couldn’t quite understand how a man like George Fields put up with his wife running around with other men and taking money for it. Were their straits really so desperate? More to the point, wasn’t he afraid of catching something? Henry considered that Mickey was probably right and that love was a strange thing. He couldn’t imagine putting up with what George Fields had put up with but for that matter he couldn’t imagine loving anyone that much.

  Mickey came back to the table and sat the beer down. ‘And you – what have you been doing while I’ve been interviewing sailors?’

  Henry smiled briefly. ‘Making a nuisance of myself,’ he said. ‘I spoke to the neighbours again, both from close to the crime scene and from their previous rooms. I also found two more addresses, one a lodging house they stayed in for two weeks and the second a couple of rooms above a shop just off the marketplace. They left the lodging house because it appears the landlord was interested in taking his rent in kind and had a wife that objected to his plans. Their previous residence seems to have been more permanent. An elderly lady, Mrs Fry, employed Mary as a maid and general companion for about eighteen months. Ruby was about four years old at the time and the old lady took a fancy to the family. George did odd jobs for her and even drove and maintained her car for her.’